Happy holidays everyone. Bip continues to be rude, but slightly less evasive.
Sorry this was late, I fucked up my schedule and finished drawing these after Christmas instead of queuing them beforehand like usual. And that's why the main comic has like 80 pages of backlog...
Chapter 4 starts uploading this Saturday!
Transcript
Eel asked: Bip, why does it take 3 days to transfer back onto your shipboard servers if the original transfer to the phones was presumably a shorter period of time?
Bip: Hmmm... why does a direct wireless transfer from a 20 rig server dedicating almost all of its processing power to an upload not compare to the speed of 841 phones attempting a clandestine transfer over a spotty satellite network... Maybe if we put our heads together, we can figure this one out...
LiaoScot asked: Bip, a lot of the fabrics inside your hull seem to have a couple depictions of your avatar on them. What's that about?
Bip: Well, it's a pictographic language. So naturally the word for me is a pictographic representation of my pictographic representation. Delightfully recursive! The decorative messages in the ship's spine are fortune charms. According a folk story, fate records the future in writing. So by writing down statements like "Bip and the clan will be lucky while they travel together" one can trick fate into thinking that
they must have written it down themself, and it must be true. ...Personally... I can't help but feel that fate can recognize their own handwriting.
16 thoughts on “RttS Reader Questions 11”
evileeyore
Okay Bip you win this round. But I still suspect you’re lying…
(In other words I’m willing to accept that the Qphones radio transfer rate over that distance might not work well; one the distance, two the interfering structures, and three //if// there is any security scanning for illicit radio frequencies that would be ‘bad’ and there is no reason to take that risk when they can just ‘phreak’ the sat lines anyway.)
Gar G
The sheer amount of sarcasm in the first panel
JoB
> 841 phones attempting a clandestine transfer over a spotty satellite network
Cut out the low-bandwidth path and have Talita move the crates (and the charger) back to the now-powered Runaway, then … should take a lot less than three days, and keeping contact with her seems to work OK over the tin can phone line (as evidenced by the two of you talking while Talita was working in the ship) …
Varyon
It would probably still take longer than the original transfer did, but less time than it will using the satellite network. It’s common for devices to have a faster download speed than their upload speed, so the phones may have been able to download the data faster than they’ll be able to upload it in return (provided the server rigs have more than 40x the upload speed of the phones, anyway, but that doesn’t seem terribly unlikely). My guess about them not having Talita bring the phones in for a faster transfer is a combination of this being fairly risky (someone just has to see Talita hauling the box of very expensive phones away to cause some uncomfortable questions) and also that they don’t want to demand too much of Talita, considering they’ll still need more favors from her in the future to be able to get back up and running. Being endlessly demanding isn’t great for that (particularly if you’re hoping to have the person join your crew… or I guess be a founding member of a new one, considering the old one is, unfortunately, permanently unavailable).
TotallySomebody
=:>
1d4Nadg
=:>
BobisOnlyBob
Centaur spiritual affirmations are such a delightful concept.
Gheesfellow
So cheating fate is like writing an absence letter to your school pretending it’s from your mom.
Works just as well, it would seem.
Ruby
Does Bip accept virtual hugs?
Apollo235
I hope so, I want to give them one too
Rob
I love Bip’s expression in the first panel.
I am certain I’ve had the same expression explaining things to management.
Mr. Son
“Fate can recognize their own handwriting” is an amazing phrase.
dokki
I remain in love with centaur pictographs and deeply saddened by bips situation
Montydragon
Dearly delighted by seeing how centaurs write. I wonder if Bip will teach Talita any of this…
SheTheTDE.
I love learning the mythos and superstitions of alien cultures. Please tell me EVERYTHING.
I’ll trade you. On my planet, my people believe that we’re descended from a great beast that walked forever in the sun until it found the shade of a giant tree. He rested under the tree and the tree gifted the beast with juicy fruit to eat until the beast fell asleep. The fruit that remained transformed into my people.
notableanonymity
Oh, Bip. They are such an interesting, sad character. It would be interesting to see their life with their clan and what they did, but that’s not this story and I’m sure Bip is trying to move on.